Bad new for fans of the Andy & Jeanine Show. A race that was becoming not just totally crazy but increasingly competitive now seems to have drifted back toward merely nutty. A new poll from fun-to-say Quinnipiac University has Democratic attorney-general candidate Andrew Cuomo up 21 on Republican Jeanine Pirro, an eight-point bump since a recent poll that showed him leading by the not entirely insurmountable 13. What accounts for the tilt? Jeanine Pirro has been claiming that once voters got over all the tabloid wackiness and took a look at her record of locking up perverts as Westchester D.A., we'd realize she was far more qualified to be the state's top lawyer than a daddy's boy with a padded résumé like Andrew Cuomo.

But the opposite seems to be true. As Pirro's past is scrutinized and the scandal fades, New Yorkers are responding with a decided "eh, maybe not so much."

But the race continues. That pink blazer Pirro wore in the second debate — the one that made her like she played keyboards in the Knack — has got to be worth a point or two in the next round of polls. Her fight will go on. And JP will struggle to climb the high heights she assailed back when she was new to us, a boat-bugging glimmer on the horizon of expectations.